Socrates: The gadfly and the god.

Socrates is the foundational thinker of Western philosophy. The thinkers who preceded him, the pre-Socratics, so called because his arrival drew a line in the history of philosophy, concerned themselves with the natural world: What is the world made of? Is everything constantly changing, is nothing ever changing? Problems of logic and the nature of reality. Socrates asked very different questions, and he asked them of everyday people everywhere he went: How should we live? What makes a person good? What is justice? It was these questions and his method of questioning that gave him such fame, and eventually got him killed.

Why then, was Socrates put to death? Chaerephon (a well regarded Athenian and friend of Socrates) went to see the Delphic oracle at the Temple of Apollo, which told him that no one was wiser than Socrates. When he heard this Socrates decided to challenge the god. He approached politicians, poets, and craftsmen in the hope of finding someone wiser. He found none. These men of renown claimed knowledge they did not possess, knowledge Socrates questioned, and proved insufficient. He was wiser in exactly that way, “When I don’t know things, I don’t think I do either.”(Apology 21d) He made fools of them, and consequently made enemies of them too. These enemies brought him to trial for corrupting the youth (which we will see as a far more sinister charge than it appears), and for impiety, for Socrates had, much to the displeasure of a city and a culture founded on religion, a god of his own.

Plato’s Apology is one of the central portraits of Socrates, a dialogue of his trial. To me, the most interesting accusation in the trial — “You corrupted the youth”, might be reconstructed as: “In his youth you were acquainted with Critias, the most ruthless leader of The Thirty, tyrannical leaders who executed civilians. We won’t mention that he tried to silence you by banning ‘the art of words’ (Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.2.31–38); and we can’t accuse you of corrupting Critias anyway, because of the amnesty and oath ‘not to recall wrongs’. So we say instead that you corrupted the youth. Truly, because there are those who now question our wisdom since you began to question it, and because we need someone to blame for the actions of these tyrannical men, you must be put to death”.

Socrates did cause the youth to question their elders (and would again) when he told them that caring for your soul is your duty, far more important than caring about money or status (29e). For that Socrates gives no defence. He declares that what he is doing is just, and as the gadfly of Athens, he will forever challenge the Athenian men on their obsession with wealth and status. The soul is what is highest.

To the claim of the youth becoming dangerous (that he is partly responsible for Critias’ actions) he says: Why would anyone purposefully corrupt someone if that person would end up damaging them? Because Socrates also suffered: he refused The Thirty when he was ordered to arrest Leon of Salamis (32c-d). This refusal would likely have led to his death had The Thirty not been overthrown shortly after. Would Socrates really have corrupted someone only to have that man try to silence him and have him executed?

Meletus (his accuser), however, is convinced that he really is corrupting the youth, but has no answer on how the youth should be instructed, because Meletus has never ‘concerned himself with’ (a joke Socrates makes of Meletus’ name) educating the youth. And if Socrates was instructing them poorly, then he should have been instructed himself, as per their custom, not brought to trial.

The second accusation: impiety, believing in different gods to the rest of the city. After proving to Meletus that he does indeed believe in some gods, and therefore cannot be condemned for being an atheist, he begins to explain what the different or ‘new’ god which he believes in is, his daimonion, “a divine something”. Since childhood it has warned him against certain actions; it never tells him what to do, just that he should not do some things.

I think most people have that small voice, which tells them when they’re about to do something wrong. Some believe we all have it, it’s just that very few people know how to listen to it, or even hear it at all. If modern people cannot accept the presence of a personal god, then Socrates may have been one who was connected to that voice in mind and spirit. Whatever the voice may have been, it seems consistent with what that small voice does, and does not do. If you were asked to go out and do something you know to be wrong, it wouldn’t take you long to think of something and do it. But if you were asked to do something you know to be right, it might be harder, not least because it is easier for people to agree on what is wrong, more so than what is right. Socrates’ guiding spirit tells him what not to do. What is right to do he must discover for himself.

Socrates’ daimonion gave him a religious authority outside the oracles, priests, and priestesses. Any religious authority which was not licensed by either the Archon (head magistrate), or the priesthood, was unacceptable. Someone claiming to have their own divine sign and religious authority was a dangerous thing.

Knowing this Socrates said, “I must make my business with the god the first priority” (21e). What the men think of him, whomever he may anger, is nothing compared to his duty to the god. Therefore, he does not deny his unauthorised religious authority — he confirms it. It is clear then that Socrates had no intention of fighting for his life in this trial; he was fighting to enlighten the men of Athens.

Where other men in his position have “resorted to begging and supplicating the jury, in floods of tears, bringing his little children into court so that everyone should feel as sorry as anything for him”, Socrates has done nothing of the sort, though he has three sons. He calls that behaviour shameful, and the men who do it foolish, “as if they’ll be immortal providing you don’t kill them off.” (34c-35a)

More than anything the Apology shows Socrates’ character. He calls a man useless if he takes “danger into account, weighing up his chances of living or dying, instead of making it the sole consideration, whenever he acts, whether his actions are just or unjust, and whether they are what a good man would do or a bad one.” (28b-c) Are your actions that of a good man, or a bad one? “Best of men… aren’t you ashamed [sickened by your lack of honour] of caring about acquiring the greatest possible amount of money… while not caring about, even sparing a thought for, wisdom and truth, and making your soul as good as possible?” (29d-e) Fear does not change what is just or good. Fear does not stop Socrates from asking such questions, even when it might mean his death. He is the gadfly of Athens, and he will wake the giant beast from its slumber if it kills him. It kills him, but: “Your killing me will do me less damage than it does you… since I think it’s not permitted for a better man to be damaged by a worse one.” (30c) His body may be killed or hurt, but he has not been harmed, because his soul cannot be damaged by them. His soul will not be corrupted by pain or death.

“Far from defending myself, as one might suppose, what I’m doing now is actually defending you, so that you don’t make a mistake with the god’s gift to you by casting your votes against me.” (30d) This sounds like arrogance, and no doubt was received as arrogance, however, I believe he is being sincere. He has never sought wealth, stature, glory, or gold — he only wanted to enlighten the people. He has spent his life aiming at excellence of the soul, and striving to get others to do the same. Whatever his daimonion is, it is real to him; the god Apollo is using him as his gadfly, and they would be hurting themselves if they killed Socrates.

Socrates was found guilty. He likely knew that the accusers wanted the death penalty, and as was law, he was given the chance to propose a counter sentence which could be accepted. A weaker man would have suggested incarceration or lashings perhaps. Socrates, however, proposed that his punishment ought to be free meals for life in the Prytaneum, an honour reserved for Olympic victors. He should be honoured amongst the greatest men of the city.

“I’ve been condemned for the lack of something, it’s not a lack of arguments but a lack of effrontery and shamelessness and the willingness to address you in the sorts of ways that it’d please you most to hear — wailing and lamenting and doing and saying plenty of other things unworthy of me… I didn’t think then that I should do anything unworthy of a free man, despite the danger I face, nor do I now regret having made my defence as I did. I’d far rather make that defence and die than demean myself and live.” (38d-e)

I’d rather die than demean myself and live. That is who Socrates is. Who he made himself.

“The difficult thing is not to avoid death; more difficult is avoiding viciousness, because viciousness is a faster runner than death.” Death is one thing, but for Socrates’ accusers, to be caught by viciousness, wickedness, unrighteousness, evil, that is a terrible fate. “If I’m going to leave the court condemned by you to death, they will leave it convicted by truth of depravity and injustice. They accept their penalty as I do mine.” (39a-b) At the end of the trial, now sentenced to death, he says that his daimonion has been silent through it all. (40a-c) He is about to die, and the god watches on in silence, so Socrates accepts his fate in silence.

Socrates’ final wish, what he demands from the men of the city and the city herself: “If my sons seem to you, when they reach puberty, to be caring about money or anything else before excellence, punish them, Athenians, by making them suffer in the very same way I used to make you suffer.” (41e) Help my sons become the men I expect you to be, who you could be.